Traveling to the West has always taken me back to memories of childhood. Perhaps stereotypical and wrong on many levels. John Wayne. Cowboys and cattle drives. Shootouts, ambushes and stagecoaches. Indians. Native Americans. First Nations. Whatever. But even when the Indians were the “bad guys” in the movies and TV shows I still always admired their courage and character. Perhaps it was easier for me as I was told I was one sixteenth Cherokee. Like any people, though, there are good and bad. Creating too much mythology or sentiment would also deny respect for the humans they were and are. An admirable characteristic of these people is the quest that youth were expected to endure or achieve. Spiritual questing was key. Sitting alone atop a butte, fasting, waiting patiently for a sign. I assume this actually occurred in many if not most tribes. Today, many youth just wander from childhood to adulthood with no compass. Not all, but many. I am a believer in rituals and signs for what they can do to transform a person into something better than what they were before.
Little signs can happen in your life. Is it just random occurrence? Just happen to have the right thing happen in our lives at the right time? I suppose statistically almost anything could happen from time to time. But believing can become reality. So I choose to believe in many things. I choose to let a “sign” be a sign. Let it center me and guide me to the true course, because I need that. I think most of us do at times.
We do not live in the country but do have about a half acre of trees behind our house that, through other peoples’ yard,s connects to a small watershed. So as today’s rain was ending, and the last light of the day was surrendering to the darkness, the deer appeared right in our yard. From my second story window I could look nearly straight down on them. I think there were five, one quite young. All wary and characteristically twitchy. For some reason my perceptions were not sensitive enough to know why but after a while they bolted back into the ever-darkening woods. Now I choose to take this as a sign. Something of a blessing for our journey. It doesn’t portend greatness or extreme adventure. I choose to see it as something of an endorsement. But I do think traveling to the West is always a blessing if you are open to what it can say, even if it is a whisper.
From a window, only feet away, what I choose to see as a blessing for our trip.
Papa and Nana On the Go 
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